momebie

[Source.]


"Right," Jojo said. Her voice turned high as she mimicked Les's hopeful prods from earlier. "There's a fire! There must be people! They'll let us get warm!"

"When was the last time you saw a fire with no people?" Les asked, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. He wriggled his hands in the ropes, trying to pull them loose.

"Oh, I don't know, volcanoes! Lightning strikes in dry forests!" She was leaning against the board they were tied to, limp and accepting of their fate.

Les was feeling more hopeful, clearly. "The sky is clear and there are no volcanoes in these woods," he hissed.

"I bet you think there are also no fire sprites anywhere in the world, AND YET!"

"You're warm aren't you?"

The sprites danced around them, touching the piles of wood and moss clumped about the clearing. Jojo and Les craned their necks to watch them spark and flare. One of the creatures flew in close to Jojo's face and ghosted a hand over the contour of the air above her cheek. "I hope they eat you first. I hope you're delicious."

"Is that any way to speak to the man who's going to save you?" he said, finally snapping his hands free.

"Man?" She managed to look incredibly, powerfully contemptuous for someone tied to a burning pyre.

[Source.]

Her mother had warned her her whole life that the universe was cold and uncaring, but Meredith hadn't found it to be either. While most girls could only boast, doe eyed and frivolously giggly, of dancing all night under the stars, she had danced all night with them, engulfed. True, the universe hadn't said much, but it was incredibly warm, even the parts of it that were blacker than black where no fire burned.

It was silly, but she got the feeling that the universe was just lonely. She had assumed it was hard to be lonely when one was filled to the brim with people and places such as were collected in the books they'd made her read, but maybe mere companionship wasn't what the universe was looking for. Maybe it was looking for more. Something that could look after it while it looked after everyone else.

Even if there was a choice she would have let it take her. Once you look into the heart of a burning star nothing else feels heavy enough to hold you down.

[Source.]

I've started working on re-writing the WWII AU so that it's real. No one tell Em, I don't want her to get her hopes up.

. . .

With all of the national delegates convening in one place to discuss the growing alien crisis, the district had anticipated some sort of terrorist attack. Attempts had been made to create safe lighting zones with gas lamps erected in the streets. They were meant to help people get out of the city more safely in case of a technological attack. They made the men uneasy. The men were used to diffused electric and halogen glows that set a person's features in stone, not the mercurial shadow play that cast a person's demons across their skin as the light flickered with the fuel.

Heeden stepped out the front door of the hotel like she was leaving a bar and tilted her hat back, giving the signal to the boys hiding in the dark room across the street. With any luck it would be at least fifteen minutes before someone discovered the dead men upstairs. She lit a cigarette and pushed off the porch, expecting to see her men armed and in the alley in less than five.

Behind her, a familiar voice shot out of the shadows. "Still inflicting your bad habits on young men, I see," Aed said.

"If you're here to save them, you're too late," she sad.

"I don't suppose it matters whether you're talking about my superiors or the lost boys you've collected over the last year."

"No boy was ever more lost than you. Did the army ever give you a working compass?"

"My compass works fine," he said. "But it's hard to read, when access to a True North has been obscured."

"Fuck with the planet, it fucks back." She could see the glint of the guns across from her, waiting for her order. She took three quick sips of the cigarette, giving a signal with the burning tip to hold on. She stood stone still as his boots slapped across the concrete behind her.

"Did you bring him?" Aed whispered into her ear and wrapped his fingers around her hip. "Did we come all this way just so he could save you from me again? Does he know that this time you really need it?"

[Source.]

Rene hadn't even had them back a day. They'd barely settled into his atrophied supracoracoideus muscles and the smooth skin that hadn't born the scabs of loss for at least twenty years, before the lightning stripped them away. He'd done it without thinking, placing himself between her and the fury, and he'd do it again. What was the point of being on this journey if he wasn't going to save people that needed saving?

He perched on the stool as she treated his burns. "If you hadn't saved me, I wouldn't be here to help," she said lightly.

Rene smiled and patted her hand, slick with warming ointment. Out of the corner of his eye he could see David, skulking in the corner, angry. Shoulders hunched up around his bowed face, he spoke directly into his crossed arms and Rene almost didn't catch the words.

"If he hadn't saved you we wouldn't need your help," David spat.

So we'll do this again this year. Probably mainly on the week days like I ended up doing last year. I'll post a picture and a snippet to go with it. You use either for inspiration to get some words of your own for the day. Then you can leave them in the comments or you can keep them to yourself. It's mainly about motivation. Some of us find eyes motivating. ;)

. . .


[Source.]

At the end of their road there was an ocean. No gold-glinting horn. No seraphim. Not even a lower saint. There was only wet sand dotted in black tar, a beige island jutting up out of the horizon about a mile out to sea, and grey water washing out the whole picture like old linens in a tub.

"We've failed every one of them you know," Rene said. The wind whipped up with his fast darkening mood and David cupped his hand around his cigarette.

"You're getting your strength back at least. We must be close."

"Close won't be enough."

"Do you ever think that maybe you were booted downstairs because of your unwaveringly cheery disposition?" David asked.

Rene said nothing. He watched as some seaweed was pushed up against his dirty grey sneakers. Beige, grey, white, black. Not even the plant life had the strength to stand out. Clouds gathered overhead. David leaned into him as the temperature dropped. Rene shrugged out of his jacket and handed it over. He'd failed everyone else, he'd be damned if this human was going to die of a cold as well.

"Holy shit," David said.

Rene could see where David had gripped his arm, the sleeve of his own jacket brushing his elbow. David shook him. Rene looked up. The beige island was shining. A single bolt of sun had burst down through the clouds and swallowed it whole.

Suddenly David was wrapped around him, laughing. Rene couldn't return it. Couldn't move his arms. Couldn't convince himself this wasn't another trick of the light. But at this point, would it matter if it was?

[Source.]

The bed and breakfast was bringing on a wistful nostalgia in David. Rene wished they'd found a hotel, but their search had lead them to a small town that was big on history and short on amenities. This was how things were going to be until they'd finished their research: mid-afternoon light through the curtains, questioning fingers pushing Rene's bangs back and forth across his face while he tried to read, dust motes, sweat spots on sheets, distraction. It's not that Rene wasn't enjoying it, it was just that it wouldn't last. Better be on the open road with the unsureness of place and mental clarity than here in this purgatory knowing exactly where he was and not knowing at all how he was supposed to feel.

[No source. GOOD JOB, TUMBLR.]


The crickets are deafening. People always talk about how they go to the country for quiet, but so far she hadn't found any. There are twigs and grass poking her in the face. There is a root near the foot of her sleeping bag that she kept knocking her ankles on. She wants to hate all of it. But above her there is a piece of black, gossamer cloth letting brilliant points of light slip through and if she looks at them for more than a few minutes she forgets to hate. She merely reaches forward. She begins to want.

[Source.]

He'd wanted a legacy. He wanted it to stand on the spot where he was born, so he obliterated his mother's loving, leaning beach home. Erased the white walls and dancing blue curtains of the three rooms where he'd broken his first bone and had his first kiss, let bonbons melt on his tongue. He wanted something that would last longer than the flesh of his flesh. Something to command the view, so that when no one remembered his face, they would still mark his effect on the landscape with their very breath.

But nature does not care for legacy. It does not pause to wait for men to pass. It aggressively heals its scars, because nature knows what so many of us don't, and that's that if you are not happy you'll never make anyone else happy.

The ocean reclaims a foot a year, but souls, trusts, and hearts are harder won.

I'm going to tie today's picture to something that forced its way out last night. In which Rene and David are possibly something more than I've made them out to be. This is why you can't leave characters alone with me.


[Source.]

The revolution will not be choreographed.

Rene left the car door open with the key in the ignition because he needed something to keep time. The winds were too fickle. The stars were too slow. The steady, man-made reminder of a machine bleeding out battery life, however, had the effect of straightening out the jagged pieces of him. It spoke steadily as if that tenor bong was heart of it. Ebb—-ebb—-ebb—. Rene could relate.

He stepped into the spotlight formed by his headlamps and the small mountain overlook became his stage. Behind him, the city of Denver lay low, reclining in the evening as its lights clawed at the black-blue sky. He rolled his shoulders forward, as if draping himself with a shawl knit from its iridescence. A costume, after all, was integral to the suspension of disbelief that any true performance required.

The ratty red Converse were terrible for pointe work, but he did what he could, scraping out a rhythmic tattoo in the concrete and gravel. Toe heel ball. Right. Toe heel ball. Left. Toe heel ball right. Right. Right. Left. He swayed low twice and then leaped into the air.

David was sitting on the hood of the car, an obscured figure caught between the high beams. His eyes followed Rene. They lifted and pinned him and there was a little burst of disappointment in Rene every time his shoes connected with the earth again. David’s gaze had held him in many places over the course of their trip, so why not now? Why not hold him up?

He finished on one knee, bent forward, palms flat on the ground making frames out of his arms and being pimpled by the gravel pushing into his skin. David pushed away from the car and slowly moved toward Rene, baptizing him with his shadow.

"I didn’t know a body could move like that." He cupped Rene’s cheek in his hand and used his thumb to gently stroke the skin below his eye.

Rene reached up and grasped David’s hand, holding it in place. “A body who has died many times can move however it likes.”

"Between the worlds," David said. "Neither here nor there. Tethered and ensnared and pulling at your bonds. What if I cut your strings?"

"You would send me hurtling into the noose instead. I’m of no use to you free."

"Not yet." David pulled Rene to his feet. "But one day we’ll be at rest and I’ll sever you in a fit of boredom. It will be my last act as I render the world wiped of grace."

"You would deprive even yourself of that power?"

"I don’t need power," David said. "I’ll have you."

By the time the car’s heart stopped Rene didn’t need it anymore. Flush with David, their shadow’s fought for the right to take the stage.

[Source.]

You wake up in a mask. Not your clothes, not your mask, not your body. But it is your sense of possibility that supplies your adrenaline and an upswell of urgency. It's a nice, comfortable bed and you sit cross-legged in the middle of it assessing your options. It's important to place your feet down on the right side, after all, and to be going in the right direction at the beginning of every journey. No one wants to go on someone else's adventure. And you've decided, regardless of who you look like, that it will be your adventure.